Thiruvananthapuram, March 11 (IANS): The Central government on Monday announced to set up 10 artificial intelligence (AI) labs in 10 colleges here, adding that Rs 2,000 crore has been set aside to finance startups which will go as investments in startups built by youth across Kerala and the country.

Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said the labs will comprise a blend of government and private institutions and are part of the IndiaAI Mission.

"This is not the limit, it is just the beginning. The infrastructure comprising hardware, software, and skilling programmes will be provided to these 10 colleges with AI labs. These AI labs will be set up in collaboration with leading global tech companies as partners in Thiruvananthapuram," he told the media.

The Minister explained how this mission whose financial outlay of Rs 10,371 crore was approved and announced by the Union Cabinet last week, will help young Indians and startups in Kerala.

"Innovation centres under the IndiaAI Mission will harness the power of AI for our Indian digital economy and our citizens. They will develop in areas such as health, medicine discovery, agriculture, education, security, governance, language translation, among others," said the Union Minister.

"Therefore, a capacity of 10,000 GPUs for AI compute will help startups in Kerala and across the country that currently lack adequate AI compute resources. Rs 2,000 crore has been set aside to finance startups."